Bernie thought she was expecting, that’s how it started. The fatigue, the nausea, and the familiar, peculiar sensation below her navel, like lightning, she said, a sure sign of something growing inside her. They’d been down this road before, but Bernie was strangely ambivalent this time, thinking about her work at the school district, what a baby at thirty-eight would do to her newfound career, never mind her body. She waited a week or so for her period, lining her panties with Kotex, before finally giving in to the idea, going so far as to check the boxes in the garage for new-life inventory. They’d need a new crib and car seat, but they were covered for clothes, boy or girl. She took three drugstore tests before she finally made an appointment to see her doctor, who did an ultrasound right there in her office and then referred her to a specialist. Bernie tacked the doctor’s business card on the memo board in the kitchen, the word ONCOLOGY printed clearly in black ink, the writing literally on the wall, a message Jay had missed on his many weekend jaunts home from Arkansas and the Chemlyne trial, whole hours swallowed up spending time with his kids, driving Ellie to the mall, and taking Ben to the movies, or catching up on his other cases. He hadn’t noticed anything was wrong, hadn’t noticed when the boxes of baby clothes went back into the garage, and Bernie never said a word. She went alone to Dr. Klotsky, on a day when Jay was at the courthouse in Little Rock and the kids were in school. Days later, it was Evelyn who drove her to and from the biopsy, sworn to secrecy. “Mama and Daddy will just worry,” Bernie had said, never mentioning her husband, and Evelyn, she told Jay months later, had assumed that he knew, had even cursed him for not walking off the trial and coming home.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he says now, rolling over in bed to look at his wife. She tells him plainly, “It wouldn’t have made more time.” The woman next to him, it’s Bernie as he first met her, at twenty-three, her hair in twin French braids. She looks tired, though, and uncomfortable, lifting her head every few seconds to find a cool spot on her pillow. Her forehead is damp, and her lips are chapped, as if she’s been laboring at some task that has no end, not yet. He keeps thinking he should get up and get her a glass of water. But will she be here when he gets back? Will she wait for him? “It wouldn’t have changed a thing, except throw away a case you worked years for, men and women bound to end up like me if they couldn’t get to the right doctors. They needed you.”
“You needed me.”
“Oh, Jay,” she says, sighing, reaching to touch his face.
He tries to put his hand over hers, but feels only his own stubble, the feverish skin beneath it. “Bernie,” he says softly. “I’m worried about Cole.”
“You did the right thing,” she says. She closes her eyes, wincing slightly. She licks her dry, cracked lips. He worries she’s in pain, a wave of it hitting her.
“Bernie?”
“I’m okay. It’s you I don’t know about.”
“I’m going to be fine. I got a plan,” he says, hot tears stinging his eyes, sliding down the sides of his face, pooling in the hollow of his neck. “I can just lie here and wait. I can wait it out, B, long as it takes. I can wait till I get to you. It’s this I can’t do.”
“But you got to.”
He hears the clang of a bell, a shriek and a command at once, like the ones that used to ring through the hallways of his junior high school, calling an end to the day. He turns when he realizes the sound is coming from his bedside phone. It’s nearly shaking with the vibration of whatever is coming through the line. He goes to answer it, but Bernie grabs his arm. This he feels through to his bones.
“The girl, Jay,” she says.
It takes him a minute to understand what she’s saying. “Alicia?”
“The news, it’s not good.”
When he opens his eyes, Ellie is standing in the doorway to his bedroom, holding the cordless phone from her room, shivering in a nightgown. Through his window, pale blue light pours across the thick carpet, the first breath of dawn blowing in. Jay looks at the tangled sheets on his bed, touching the cold, empty place beside him. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. “Dad,” Ellie says, her voice quivering, on the verge of tears. Unable to say more, she simply holds out the phone. It’s Lonnie on the line. Jay sinks back onto the bed at the sound of her voice at this hour. The news, it’s not good. “They found her,” Lon says.
Part Two
CHAPTER 11
Jay is dressed by seven o’clock, in a suit and tie. He wakes Ben and tells him and his sister to do the same. “Church clothes, please.” But not Lori, he says. Lori is going home. The doorbell rings at quarter to eight. Ellie doesn’t seem to believe he actually called Lori’s mother until Mrs. King is standing in their foyer, literally wringing her hands. “Let’s go,” she says sternly, as Lori shuffles in her direction. Her mother grabs her oversize bag and kisses the top of her daughter’s head. As the two leave, Mrs. King mumbles a thank-you to Jay. He closes and locks the front door, turning then to see Ellie standing across the room, pointedly still in her nightgown, her arms crossed in righteous anger. Behind her, Ben is in a navy sports coat and tan slacks, his big-boy uniform. He’s nibbling the edge of a Pop-Tart. “What’s going on?” he says, looking between his sister and his dad. Jay doesn’t answer, instead asking Ellie if she wants toast and eggs. “I can’t believe you just did that,” she says.
“Get dressed.”
“You promised you wouldn’t say anything.”
“No, I didn’t.”
She glares at her father. “I will never trust you again.”
“You told me because you trust me, because you wanted me to know, because, deep down, you wanted my help. Lori can hate me all she wants.”